If you’ve visited the Giller Prize website lately (The Scotiabank Giller Prize? Like Scotiabank Nuit Blanche? When did corporate sponsorship become so blatantly obvious?) you may have noticed that they are hosting a contest called “Guess the Giller.” An interesting choice of words. By “guess,” they of course mean “choose.” They want you to pick your favourite of the 5 shortlisted books (Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air, Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero, Daniel Poliquin’s A Secret Between Us, M.G. Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Song, and Alissa York’s Effigy) and if your choice wins, you win. Maybe.

Though I’m sure the organizers of the Giller use the word “guess” for purely alliterative, non-ironic purposes, when looking at past winners of the coveted award, I couldn’t help but feel that guess might actually be more fitting than choose. Would many people have chosen Vincent Lam as the winner in 2006? Maybe not. But knowing Lam’s history with Atwood (they met each other on a cruise ship, he gave her his manuscript, McClelland & Stewart published it), and knowing Atwood’s history with the Giller (she won the award in 1996, has been a juror twice), some might’ve guessed.

In a recent editorial (“Kingmakers”), Geist columnist Stephen Henighan indicts the Giller for being nepotistic, Toronto-centric and insider-oriented. Generally, the Giller grants the top prize to writers published by what Henighan calls the “triumvirate of publishers owned by the Bertelsmann Group: Knopf Canada, Doubleday Canada and Random House Canada.” Lam’s book, Bloodletting & Other Miraculous Cures, was published by McClelland & Stewart, which is owned in part by the Bertelsmann Group. This year, it would seem the trend has continued; four of the five 2007 shortlisted books were published by Bertelsmann Group companies.

Henighan writes that the Giller Prize is “the most conspicuous example of corporate suffocation of the public institutions that built our literary culture … Nothing signalled the collapse of the literary organism as vividly as the appearance of this glitzy chancre on the hide of our culture.” Chancre, meaning a painless ulcer that develops on the genitals as a result of venereal disease, is a particularly vivid word to use in this case. Vivid if only because Henighan’s point is to illustrate just how infertile the Canadian literary scene has become of late. Gone are the days, laments Henighan, when “independent bookstores made it possible for a well-received small-press short story collection to sell 700 to 1000 copies, and sometimes more.” Now, thanks to box/book stores like Chapters, independent presses are suffocating, and independent writers are being ignored by the masses. Then along comes the Giller, and its triumvirate of worthy publishers to make things worse.

Although Henighan’s argument is somewhat conspiratorial and, at times, downright paranoid (Michael Redhill calls Henighan’s argument “nothing less than the bleatings of a self-declared outsider who actually hates his outsider status”), there is a spark of truth to his indictments. From its inception in 1994 to 2004, only one Giller winner (Mordecai Richler) lived further than a two-hour drive from the corner of Yonge and Bloor. Of the past 13 winners, two writers, Munro and Vassanji, have won the award twice. Both Munro (1998, 2004) and Atwood (1996) were nominated in 2006, and this year Vassanji (1994, 2003) and Ondaatje (2000) have made it to the top five. Nevertheless, by calling the Giller an ulcer, though amusing (would anyone be offended if we now referred to painless ulcers on the genitals as “gillers”?) Henighan seems to overshoot the mark.

Like Henighan, I’m also a bit skeptical of the Giller, and all that it represents in the world of Canadian writing. Unlike Henighan, I’m not distraught by the predictability or the corporate partiality of it all. At least, no more upset about that than about the predictability of other big awards galas, like the Oscars, or even smaller events, like the ECMAs. The big prizes have always gone to the big sellers and promoters, and though there is sometimes an occasional surprise (Henighan begrudgingly cites 2005’s Giller winner David Bergen as an example), can we really blame big business for rewarding its most successful employees? Can we fault a prize founded by Jack Rabinovitch, “responsible for the planning, development, construction, leasing and financing of 6 million square feet of commercial, retail and hotel space” (Giller website), for rewarding writers on the basis, even the partial basis, of financial success?

I say “partial basis” because the Giller isn’t just about fulfilling the corporate mandate. It’s also about retaining credibility. With the possible exception of Lam, the Giller does award writers of literary merit, even if they happen to be past their prime. In a recent interview, Doris Lessing, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature (admittedly, quite different than the Giller), stated “I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise … I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd … better give it to me now before I've popped off” (The Associated Press). Here, Lessing touches upon the point that Henighan seems to miss: literary prizes, even ones that presumably award a single book, usually reward the name on the cover, not the title. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Giller is here to reimburse Canada’s literary exports, not to celebrate unknown writers for their relatively unknown achievements, or to give independent presses their long overdue recognition. Leave that job to savvy, enthusiastic readers.

So will Vassanji win a third time? Will Ondaatje, worshipped in universities and creative writing workshops across the country, take the prize (a whopping 40K) for a second time? Does it really matter? Should any of us care? For the record, I’ve guessed my Giller: Ondaatje. I haven’t read his latest book yet, but since so many Giller winners seem to win more than once, I’ve got a good feeling about him. But it’s still anyone’s guess.